“I was told he was inquiring about me, but I’d been sold a lot of dreams before,” he said. “I’d believed in them and ended up disappointed, so this time I just thought: ‘This is a bunch of nonsense!’ ”
After all, at the time Mayweather already was 43-0, considered the best pound-for-pound boxer of his era and for four years straight, according to Forbes magazine, was the highest paid athlete in the world.
And Clemons?
The Colonel White High School graduate, as he put it, had stumbled through “street life” as a young man. It left him with a gold grill on his teeth and a less than shiny pro resume that included a 2-0 record, five total rounds of boxing and ring invitations that had never gotten him past Cincinnati.
“They gave me a phone number they said was Floyd’s, but I didn’t call,” Clemons said. “But then after a while they said, ‘Yo, what you gonna do?’ So I said, ‘OK, here’s my number.’
“And sure enough, Floyd called himself.”
Two days later Clemons pulled together all the money he could and moved to Las Vegas.
Even so, the dream didn’t come easily after that. He eventually suffered a detached retina in his left eye and was told by one doctor his career was likely over. Instead, he said, he sought a second and third opinion, returned to Dayton, had corrective surgery and ended up cleared to fight again.
He had been an accomplished amateur and soon was one of Mayweather’s prime sparring partners. He helped ready the 12-time world champ at five different weight classes for his last six fights, including much-trumpeted bouts with Manny Pacquiao and Canelo Alvarez.
In the process, he had some legendary sessions with Mayweather, many of which became high theater in the always-crowded and vocally-critiqued sessions that went on in the champ’s Vegas’ fight club.
And one of those toe-to-toe confrontations became the stuff of a legend and a YouTube hit.
“I went 28 minutes straight with Floyd — no rest, no water,” the 32-year-old junior middleweight recalled Wednesday. “It started off we were supposed to do five-minute rounds. But when they said there were 30 seconds left until rest time, Floyd says, ‘We’re not on the clock!’
“I agreed to keep going and I pushed myself. I was going off adrenaline. The only way to exalt higher at this is to be there with the best and no one is better than Floyd Mayweather.”
Last fall, the 49-0 Mayweather announced his retirement — a decision he may soon go back on — but in the process Clemons was pushed to forge a new path. While he continues to live in Vegas and has worked as a sparring partner for other top fighters, he has set out to build his own career.
It’s a pursuit that now has brought him full circle.
Saturday’s pro card
Clemons, now 3-0, is one of the featured fighters on the six-bout pro card at the Dayton Convention Center. The show, which begins at 7 p.m. (tickets start at $20 and can be purchased at the door), is being presented by Pearson Promotions.
Clemons meets Terry VanAvery of Kalamazoo, Michigan in a four-round middleweight bout. Three other Dayton fighters are on the card: Former Dunbar football player and Sinclair Community College student Jeff Camp and the Rodriguez brothers, Nicholas and Noel.
“This is a very, very big deal coming home to fight,” said Clemons, who has “God” tattooed in big script on the back of one hand and “Gifted” inked on the other.
“Once I put it out on Facebook that I was making my Dayton (debut), I got so many shares and likes I couldn’t believe it. People heard I took my talent to the next level once I left here and now they all want to see it.
“I am God Gifted and Saturday night is a chance to show it.”
Jeff Camp’s story
Camp is looking at Saturday night as a showcase, as well, but his explanation is a bit different.
“I feel like I got to make up for the last time I fought here — back at Fifth Third Field,” he said. “I got too excited, too into the hometown crowd and I was thrown off my fight. I lost that night.”
That was a 2011 amateur bout on a gala show at Fifth Third Field that highlighted Chris Pearson in his last bout before turning pro.
Before that fight five years ago, Camp — who had just won the middleweight crown at both the Missouri Black Expo and the Ohio State Fair, had starred on a Drake’s Fight Night outdoor show and had surprised everyone by winning three straight fights before a quarterfinal loss at a prestigious Olympic Trials qualifying tournament in Cincinnati — had been especially pumped because he had a large following of family and friends in the crowd at Fifth Third Field.
“It’s rare we ever get to fight here in Dayton, so I’ve got to make sure I give the hometown folks what they want to see,” he told me before the bout. “I want them all to know what I can do.”
But that didn’t quite happen.
“I started rushing and got out of my pace and by the last round I ran out of steam,” he admitted.
He lost the three-round decision to Cincinnati’s Sunny Jenkins.
“Right at that moment I felt like I had let everybody down,” he said. “That’s why this fight is so important. I’m able to completely zone out everything else now and focus like I should. And if I do that, I can take the next step. It’s time.”
The 27-year-old Camp now has four kids and works as an armed security guard at various sites — everything from Kroger’s stores in Dayton to a power plant in Middletown — around the Miami Valley.
He launched his pro boxing career two years ago, but is 0-2-1. In those three bouts — two in Cincinnati and one in Indianapolis — he’s gone in to fight the hometown fighter.
Saturday, in the first pro show in Dayton in over two decades, he meets William Davis from St. Louis.
“I know things can turn around just like that,” he said. “As an amateur, I started out 0-5. By the time I ended my amateur career, I was really doing well.
“It can be the same as a pro. It’s got to be. You can’t quit on your dreams. If you do, everything is pointless. If you don’t keep believing in them, you could miss out on what life really can be.”
And no one knows that better than Will Clemons, who once thought Floyd Mayweather’s interest was nothing but nonsense.
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